Precariousness, harassment and crisis: gendered workplace violence in Vietnam’s global industry

Global capital is increasingly settling in Vietnam’s ‘socialist-oriented market economy’. Those employed in the outsourced workplace may encounter precarious and insecure working conditions, while women employees may even be subjected to gender-based violence. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in the Industrial Zones of northern Vietnam, this article examines gendered workplace violence and the crises it provokes in the life of a targeted woman. The article argues that combining research on gender-based violence with anthropological studies of gendered labour precarity and, moreover, the anthropology of crisis allows for an analytical framework by which the phases, scales and spaces of harm can be unravelled. Focusing on a specific incident of male-to-female sexual harassment in global industry, the article shows how this workplace-related incident caused an immediate crisis but also spilled over into other aspects of the abused woman’s life, as the crisis changed in modality, intensity and temporality.